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Assistant Professor

Department of Physics, James Franck Institute, and the College

William T. M. Irvine’s research interests are in the fields of experimental soft condensed matter and theoretical and experimental “knotted fields.” He is specifically interested in the strong role played by geometry and advanced optical techniques. He recently investigated some intricate and stable topological structures that can exist in light fields whose evolution is governed entirely by the geometric structure of the field.

He is coauthor of several publications, including “Pleated Crystals on Curved Surfaces,” “Interstitial Fractionalization in Curved Space” (in preparation), “Topological Tweezers (submitted for publication), and “Lock and Key Colloids through Polymerization-Induced Buckling of Monodisperse Silicon Oil Droplets” (submitted for publication). He was awarded the Northern Telecom Prize (experimental) and Tyndall Prize (theory) from Imperial College.

Irvine earned his PhD in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, DPhil in physics from the University of Oxford, and MS from Imperial College in London.